All posts tagged Upper Hutt Posse

I hadn’t heard of Upper Hutt Posse before but they have just been given a Legacy Award at the Legacy Award at the 2018 Vodafone New Zealand Music Award ceremony.

On accepting the award frontman Dean Hapeta spoke against involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, suggested New Zealand should assist Palestine against ‘racist’ Israel, we should be helping the caravan of people walking through Mexico against US colonial power, and he finished saying “Death to all oppressors”.

While there has been a lot of jumping up and down about people coming New Zealand who are alleged to be guilty of ‘hate speech’ this was not given a lot of attention by media and was applauded journalist Mihingarangi Forbes:

“I got some words for you. All of our armed forces and military that have been fighting these fake wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for oil, for USA imperialism – get out of there!

“What you need to be doing is going to Palestine to fight against the racist terrorism of the Israeli state. That’s where all of our fighting energy needs to be.”

I don’t think that going to Palestine to fight against Israel is a sensible idea – and while one might cynically think that the NZ armed forces are small enough to slip into Palestine without being noticed, this just sounds crazy.

“Get to the Mexican/USA border and defend that caravan of indigenous people seeking refugee status in the United Snakes of Ameri-KKK-a”.

“They’re seeking refuge because their countries have been wrecked by that colonial power known as the USA.”

“Death to all oppressors!”

Maybe Upper Hutt Posse won’t be doing a tour of the US.

But here this just gets a passing mention from media as if it was a harmless rant by a crazy bugger.

Frontman for hip-hop pioneers Upper Hutt Posse, Dean Hapeta, has gone on a remarkable tirade at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, as his group were honoured with a legacy award.

In a controversial speech, Hapeta called for “death to all oppressors”.

I am sure it would be rarked up as more than ‘controversial’ if someone ‘non-indigenous’ called for the death of groups, whether Israel, the United States or otherwise.

This could be passed off as a crazy inconsequential rant by some fringe artist so it doesn’t matter, but it does indicate different standards for different people on speech that could be described as ‘hate speech’ or could be seen to be trying to provoke violence and murder.

UPDATE:

I deleted my tweet about Upper Hutt Posse. I don't support harm against anyone just simply remember UHP as a grassroots Māori hip hop group who stood for Māori rights and against oppression.